Foreign and International Documents
Definitions
Foreign Documents are publications issued by foreign national governments, their ministries, or provincial governments, and include publications by a nation’s Central National Bank, its Judiciary, Legislature or Statistical Office, as well as National Museums. Examples are Great Britain’s Parliamentary Papers or the reports of the Tanzania Antiquities Department or a national census.
International Documents are issued by international governmental organizations (IGO’s) whose members are national governments. Prominent examples of IGO’s are the European Community, the United Nations, the World Bank, etc. However, Amnesty International and the International Red Cross are not IGO’s. While these organizations may be international in scope, they are not empowered to act on behalf of individual national governments.
Associations or professional society publications are not considered documents; neither are foreign university publications.
Identification
There are no easy tips for identifying foreign or international documents. They are printed around the world in a variety of languages, they carry no Documents Department stamp, and are not assigned a special call number.
Usually on the cover or the title page, there will be an official looking logo or a government agency will be listed as the author or publisher/co-publisher. The trick is to recognize a governmental entity, and Worldwide Government Directory can help.
For example:
1. Aid to African Agriculture. Uma Lele, editor. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
This item is an IGO publication from our World Bank comprehensive order. A note on the title page and in the bibliographic record reports that it was "co-published for the World Bank." It presently resides in Reference. In fact, the Johns Hopkins University Press often co-publishes monographs for the World Bank.
2. Folktales of the Canadian Sephardim. Andre E. Elbaz. Toronto: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 1982.
This is a foreign government publication from the National Museum of Man (Canada). Again a note explains that it was "co-published by the National Museum..." This book now lives in the Judaica collection.
Housing Documents
All foreign and international paper documents and publications are cataloged for the general UF collections; therefore, reviewers can expect to find them fairly regularly.
The Documents Department currently houses the large microfiche sets of IIS (international statistics), United Nations documents, and the National Statistical Compendiums. The European Community (both paper and microfiche) depository collection is also kept in the department. However, there are also EC depository items in the UF general collections and storage due to a variety of reasons.
Depository Status
Smathers Libraries are one of only 45 European Community Depository libraries in North America. This obligates UF to:
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maintain one copy of everything sent from the EC or its institutions
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make these materials available to the public
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participate in national resource sharing
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catalog materials on OCLC
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loan materials through interlibrary loan.
Although the European Community is less than forty years old, it has accumulated many associated names. The following is a partial list of institutions included in the term European Community:
- European Coal and Steel Community
- Euratom
- Economic and Social Consultative Assembly
- European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training
- European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions
- European Parliament
- Council of Ministers
- European Court of Justice
Review
The Foreign Documents and International Documents Librarians should be notified if documents are deselected or sent to storage. Collection managers should flag documents with the red flag before they are withdrawn or sent to storage.